'I always wondered... why I would have been abandoned' Tony was found wrapped in his mum's coat by the River Thames in London in the middle of World War Two. This is his story
After Deborah, Tony's closest relation was a fourth cousin called June, in Scotland. That meant she probably shared with Tony a pair of great-great-great-grandparents, who lived sometime in the 1800s.To find out which ancestor pair Tony and June shared, Julia searched the databases of the DNA-matching companies and found someone who was a cousin of both Tony and June at a similar distance."I found an ancestor pair living in the 1860s that all three people shared.
Every cell in your body contains DNA molecules, packaged in structures called chromosomes, which hold the instructions the body needs to develop, survive and reproduce. It was slow and painstaking work but towards the end of 2018 Julia identified a couple she thought could be Tony's maternal grandparents, who had lived in Kirkcaldy, north of Edinburgh. They had a son still living in Scotland called Bill who was in his 90s and was reluctant to do a test. However Bill's daughter, Kathleen, agreed to help once she heard Tony's story. The results showed Kathleen was almost certainly his first cousin."Bill had a sister called Mary who died in 1988.
"When she came I had a friend with me, who was writing it all down. It was a hell of a lot to absorb," Tony says. "Sheena gave me an album full of old photographs of the family. It was just lovely. She's a great girl."Sheena immediately noticed something familiar about Tony. She found out that James had gone on to remarry after his divorce from Mary and had had a daughter called Anita. When Anita was approached and told about Tony's story, her response took everyone by surprise.Anita says discovering the existence of Tony has laid to rest a family mystery that had troubled her for most of her life."I was anything between eight and 10. I heard raised voices and I was listening at the door. I just heard, 'Oh, it's awful you know that a baby was left.
"He was a very supportive and helpful person. It just seems such an out-of-character thing for him and I think it weighed heavily on him," she says.
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